As a young man, I would have given nearly anything to attend Stanford or MIT, but I knew I wasn’t quite up to their standards. Now I find their presidents are not up to mine.
With our hiring and interview process serving as a great filter, it was impossible to tell who fell into which population until they told you.
With that said, the Square interview process isn't as algorithmic as most tech or finance companies and is instead more collaborative, so the raw IQ most MIT grads would use for their Jane Street interviews probably doesn't apply here.
Genuflect when you say that fella.
I honestly thought (and still hope) that I missed the sarcasm.
Stephen Smale scored a Wolf Prize, a Fields Medal, a Sloane Fellowship and a slew of other accolades off the back of mediocre grades at the University of Michigan (a fairly decent public research uni I've heard but not as far as I know an "elite" school).
Looking around there's many a high achiever that missed out on a US Ivy League placing.
I'll be honest, I'm sure there are some high achievers that missed out, but I haven't met a single one. Most very high achieving people I know that didn't go to top schools at least got into one (and usually multiple). I don't think there's any hope for my class of people.
Anyway, maybe you should change the way you measure yourself.
yes, it is, and it's seen as a proxy for intellectual aptitude
And clearly since I have no intellectual aptitude...
You’re also conflating the perception of intellect with the actual possession of it. It seems like you don’t have much confident in your measure of either. Maybe find a therapist. Help with this is beyond the scope of HN comments.
There are countless people who have not attended a top tier college, e.g. people who might be regarded as “intellectually inferior” who are richer than you and I. Meditate on that.
Maybe a very simple comparison is between young tennis players that work with a local pro and go to tennis camp, and the super-talented ones working with elite professional coaches, the kind that train world champions. It was clear that there is no way you could teach yourself at anywhere near the level of top-10, nor find that education at most schools. And remember that your peers are part of your education - you won't find that population of peers either.
I know some institutions hire only from the elite, top-10 schools. I used to think it was 83% prejudice, but after those experiences I understand why. It's still lazy and unfair, but I also see significant reasons for it, maybe 33% prejudice.
(Possibly other top-10 schools aren't as good as the one I have experience with, of course.)
Because all I can take away is that people like me are just objectively inferior compared to you, destined to not be a future leader or professional. Is that not what you are attempting to communicate? I just want to be crystal clear. We all know people like you are superhuman. I'm just wondering what it should mean for the rest of us, the 99.99%.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/27/049r-...
Makes me think my class of people are just considered garbage humans by everyone.
The whole "matters less multiple years into career" bit is a cope if it's just a measure of how inherently good you are if you can get in. There seems to be a clear separation between the people that get in and the people that don't!
The first step is to put aside subjective biases, put aside ourselves completely, which is necessary to reading and listening effectively - curiously and objectively. You may fear or hate those things, but you brought them to the conversation; they aren't what I wrote about. (For example, I never said I attended either institution, or that the students there are somehow superior.)
Another step: There are more talented people, with better resources, than you - and than me, and you might be one of them. Good for you, if that's so; I hope you go much further than I do. That fact will always be true for everyone (ignoring a statistically meaningless theoretical exception). If we can't handle that fact, we can't talk about reality. Must we censor the idea that elite university education is exceptional, and their student bodies are exceptional? It's a cheap way out of the conversation.
Step three is that it doesn't bother me at all that you might go further than me, or the students at these institutions might go further. What is to fear? I'm not inferior to anyone on the planet. If we rely on external rewards, especially elite ones, as necessary to a successful life, then 99.99% will 'fail' - which seems to be where you reached your own conclusions. Most importantly, all the external rewards in the universe won't fill the holes inside; people seek them as a substitute, including elite status, but it never works. The only answer is to be happy with yourself internally, to provide love and recognition internally, regardless of the external rewards. The external doesn't fill those holes, and will come and go; you are the only person who will always be there; nobody can take that away.
> I'm not inferior to anyone on the planet
These appear in tension, yes? It’s pretty clear that I’m inferior to anyone at Harvard including Claudine Gay, and my life is far worse than anyone there and will not get better. It’s also clear that people like you would definitely believe people like me are subhuman “NPCs” because we didn’t accomplish enough in high school if you bristle at censoring your admiration for this exceptional, superhuman cohort of people. If they’re superhuman, I can only conclude I’m under human, yes?
The tension is only if you accept some external definition of yourself. That's why I talked about external and internal in the GP. Harvard can't possibly love you; in a sense, nobody can love you; you can only love yourself (and then, there's there's room for personal love from others - but never Harvard). The same goes for me and everyone else.
All that matters is what you give to yourself. If you give yourself the parent comment, that's what you will have, even if Harvard begged you to come - lots of externally successful people are very unhappy for that reason. If you give yourself love and value, then you will have that, again regardless of what Harvard says about you. Harvard is orthogonal to the outcome.
You are not inferior to anyone. But only you can tell yourself that. You won't hear me until you tell yourself and believe it. But I really mean it.
All I see is the rich fucking over everyone else for power and inflating public perception of their intelligence to try and keep actually intelligent people down.
> Doudna joined Yale's Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry as an assistant professor in 1994.
... and now works at UC Berkeley.
David Liu [2], who pioneered base editing, a generational improvement on classic CRISPR, works at Broad Institute (which is a collab between Harvard and MIT):
> He is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
I absolutely loathe the current social meta where people are allowed (even celebrated) for thoughtlessly punching upwards, regardless how broad the brush (boxing glove?) seems to be. Are there shitheads in these institutions? Undoubtedly. Are there also a ton of really brilliant people who have good intentions, have integrity, and deserve your utmost respect? Undoubtedly. Are the shitheads more likely to be located in administration? My bet is yes, because the scope of administration is a lot more political, but again -- we have to be careful.
Is it anywhere near accurate to say "They’re all wrought with dishonesty and self preservation"? I don't see how this statement could be supported with anything other than personal emotion. Anti-intellectualism is just another form of dangerous prejudice and should be treated as such. You can sign me up for metaphorically stringing up this particular asshole.
I also say all this as someone who didn't go to a prestigious school.
Happy New Years!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Liu
Right, that is the nature of every human institution, and every human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Charpentier?wprov=s...
However, she did win the Nobel prize and I have found source after source that suggests she seemed to be fundamental to the development of the science.
My point remains -- you could literally substitute her name with one of a thousand names associated with high profile biomedical miracles to have originated from prestigious universities.
Update: might be
Citation needed.
In the negative, you have this story at Stanford. With MIT you have the Jeffery Epstein connection, some high profile retractions, and the president part of the three Uni Presidents who flubbed the anti-semitism question in the congressional hearing.